


A Cataclysm in Ten Parts

by epkitty



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol, Comma splices, First Time, M/M, Obsession, Poetry, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-02
Updated: 2011-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-16 01:13:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 10,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epkitty/pseuds/epkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gillette – slowly… deliciously – lets himself fall in love with his commanding officer.  He revels in his selfish secret for ages, until an old acquaintance jeopardizes everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Love Recognized

**Author's Note:**

> Partially inspired by the movie ‘Notes on a Scandal’ and also by Theodore Roethke’s poem ‘I Knew A Woman,’ to which there are a few allusions. Some of the poems referenced within the body of the story were not yet written when it takes place; I consider this artistic license. (In other words, I ask that you come, enter my world, and pretend with me…)

There are many things in the world and you  
Are one of them

 

Andrew Gillette lives in a world of light and shadow.

When James Norrington enters his sight, the world is light. When he leaves it, all is darkness again.

When James Norrington meets his gaze, Andrew’s world is green, a storm of green clouds and gray-flecked hail, often joined by twisters. Little tornadoes – dust devils – whirl in his gut, and he marvels that paired jewels of rare color and their lightning flash can reduce his body to such weakness. That lightning is the most brilliant brightness his world can achieve, so intense that Andrew is occasionally stunned by it, and deafened too, as though thunder should always accompany the storm. Merely looking into James Norrington’s eyes is meeting a hurricane.

When James Norrington speaks, it is a symphony of magical notes, crooning across such a spectrum of sound that Andrew tries to recreate it with his violin, but even the elegant body and strings of wooden perfection cannot match the angel’s dark tones of James Norrington’s voice. It would be the equivalent of mixing oils on a palette in hopes of reconstructing the color of enigmatic eyes.

Impossible.

White knees shimmer, reflecting bronze summer sunbeams, and Andrew daily longs to divide one from the other like a parting curtain. His eyes would dazzle at the starched white Navy cotton, and he would gladly suffer the blindness for the simple glancing brush of trembling knuckles to a taut thigh wrapped in ivory.

The curve of the man’s calf flows like an ocean, and Andrew would navigate it with eyes and fingers like compass and divider, memorizing its uncommon topography as though to mimic it in later seclusion, sketching a leg in the air as if worshiping a false idol in place of his father’s religion.

The blue coat is the same as every officer’s blue coat, but _his_ blue coat fills Andrew’s vision like a cloudless, dusk-blooming sky— it is as boundless and unreachable, as large and unforgiving. The gold buttons twinkle like stars, and he’s wished at least a dozen times upon every last one. He has seen the blue coat without the man inside it, hanging limp over a chair, or languishing like a prisoner from a polished hook. It is just a coat. But when James Norrington fills it, it is Andrew’s starry sky, and just as distant.

James Norrington’s hands are birds that grasp a quill in delicate talons and soar across the fields of paper. Strong as eagles to grip the hilts of shining swords. If Andrew were a quill, he would know the precision of trained fingers; a sword, he would know the fierce, fighting squeeze of a killer. And Andrew would gladly stand to it, sword or shield.

He would die for this man, for all his many parts.

It was not sudden. It was the lazy, sublime accumulation of an icicle or stalactite. A thousand years would not be enough to study this love, the way it wracked and winded him, one day liberating as a lark’s song, the next a manacle choking him to breathless despair.

But slow. Slow as molasses and twice as sweet. One day, a grain of sand, now a pearl. A tiny pearl that glows so bright, he only keeps it enfolded inside himself, pictures it residing in the red folds of his pumping heart, and does not take it out to look at it except in dead of night and all alone, examines this pearl that has grown without permission or knowledge. Now a jewel encompasses the metaphor of his love and it does not even exist.

Once, James Norrington’s hand rested on his shoulder, and the thundering voice praised him and that was the moment the pearl shone so bright Andrew thought the thumping, gross innards of his chest would never contain it, that it would betray him in a shining blaze of passion. Intractable.

But Andrew is an actor of Greek proportions, and like a practiced chorus is prepared. One mask for vanity, another for self-righteousness. One for Naval decorum and one for his nervous tension. Andrew Gillette wears many masks, and for so long that the switching of one to another or careful layering of gratitude over pride is second nature. The masks, in fact, rarely come off, even in the strange solitude of an empty room when he wears them for the faceless mirror.

Paper is not cheap, but Andrew is not poor, so he fills sheaves and sheaves with carefully penned verses and observations.

He does not consider himself a poet or an artist, but – unwittingly – James Norrington has made him both. Hundreds of colorless sketches describe green eyes in lines and swirls again and again, overlapping, running off the page without restraint or consideration for boundaries.

Under normal circumstances, Andrew has a great respect and understanding of boundaries. When the cold door to his room is barred, such walls can melt away, so that half an eye is inked on a desk marred with letters like ‘ation’, ‘lematic’, and ‘oud.’ Empty syllables and half an eye escaped their paper prisons.

Andrew decides it is good that he does not receive visitors.

One day, he will clean the desk.  
 Not today.

Today, he will secure his masks (more fastidiously even than his uniform) and he will perform his Lieutenant’s duties with an Admiral’s air and he will look in James Norrington’s eyes without going astray.

It will not come as a surprise to his peers when he dines alone.

He will smile when it is appropriate, but he will not laugh.

At night, he will retreat to his room and pull out a fresh piece of vacant vellum from the wide drawer. It will crackle as he moves it through the air, but it will lie silent on the desk, covering the half an eye.

He will get black ink on his tan fingers when he writes:

  
I was not prepared. Your storms whisk me away  
And I cling to nothing in your ocean.  
If this did not happen everyday,  
It would not, I think, drain my thumping emotion,  
But it does.

I was not prepared. Perfection of voice and tone  
So stun my unenlightened mind  
That the drumming baritone  
Lifted the timid heart of me and shined  
Through who I was.

Obliterating sense of self and comprehension  
Was not your intent. Still, you’ve both blinded me and deafened,  
So that I must learn my world in a new dimension:  
You. You are my hell and heaven.

You grazed my hand, my body quaked;  
Thirst was only created then, not slaked.  
Some days, mere measly moments are shared  
Yet ever more I find that I was not prepared.  


  


This poem will join its brothers. It will reside in the cabinet or in the stacks of paper beside the desk. One day, maybe in a few years, Andrew may reread it. Until then, it will live unnoticed and unremembered between a jagged sketch of James Norrington at the prow of a frigate and a rambling monologue on the way he smells after a storm.

The word obsession never occurs to Andrew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "There are many things in the world and you/ Are one of them" is from Robert Penn Warren's 'Love Recognized'


	2. Transmigration

Faces crumble, bodies tumble, sunshine

 

The new arrival in the Fort is a figure from Andrew’s past. Dark eyes widen, the pupils a growing black iris of shadow. All the light is gone now.

Theodore Groves is a gloom come to ruin the dazzle.

James Norrington is close, close enough to touch. He speaks, the drumming voice filling his needful ears. “I say, Gillette, are you quite all right? Did you hear me? This is Theodore Groves.”

“We’ve met.” Theodore Groves is a handsome man. He smiles too much. “Andy and I were chums at school.” His smile is luminous, but Andrew does not see it. “Isn’t that right, old boy?” Theodore Groves is loud. Boisterous is another word to describe him.

James Norrington looks between them. Andrew is uncommonly pale. When James Norrington lifts a hand as though to touch, to break the reverie, to express his concern, Groves tells him, “Oh, you must know Andy by now; sometimes the littlest thing sets him off, but by tomorrow, he’ll be right as rain. You believe it, sir.”

Though unacquainted, James Norrington is inclined to believe him, this easygoing man, unassuming, unaffecting. He shows an honest face.

“Come along, Andy, your day’s done. When’s the last time you had a good dip, eh?”

As a leaf in a whirlwind, what protestations Andrew makes are ineffective, and he is drawn along into the dark of the night, removed from James Norrington’s presence, the only true radiance in his world.

His black shoes reflect the lanterns’ glow more than Groves’s, but both pairs clop over the cobblestones like the clatter of iron-shod horses. “You’re pale as a sheet, old man. Come along now, there’s got to be a least one public house in walking distance. In fact, I believe there’s one, right here…” Groves steers Andrew like a ship curving portside, around the craggy porch and through the narrow crevice of the door.

When Andrew is beached upon an unsound chair, he stays as though moored there.

“What’s your poison?”

This fog of fear and darkness must be conquered. Andrew looks up. “Rum.” It is appropriate, he thinks. Rum is common in the Caribbean, and the choice of all manner of criminals. Soon, he will find himself among them, and rum will be his only salvation.

Groves returns with an entire bottle. Andrew thinks this is a step in the right direction.

The burn is harsh and sweet.

“Whoa, slow down there, Andy. That one’s for sharing.” Groves takes the bottle away.

Another blanket of darkness to cover the light. Only the pearl is left to Andrew, shimmering in a small corner of his heart.

“What’s with you, eh? We haven’t seen each other in ten years and you’ve said all of two words to me. ‘Yes’ and ‘rum.’”

Andrew opens his eyes – his true sight – for the first time since Groves and his dapper manner eclipsed his hopes. The face is strong and chiseled, the body no less so. His eyes glitter with the constant spark of mischief and the smile is never artificial.

“Teddy…”

“That’s right,” Groves laughs with calm delight, “old Teddy.”

“You’re… You can ruin me quite thoroughly.”

The mischief fades, the mouth sags. “Ruin? What on earth do you mean, old chap?”

“You said it yourself, to the Captain… We were at school together.”

Groves has an expressive face, and little reason to hide his sentiments. Suspicion nags at the edge of his mouth as unease pulls his heavy brows together. In sum, his features successfully convey his sympathy and pity. “You’re talking about that fiasco with Davis, aren’t you? Damn… Huh, I haven’t thought about ‘Darling’ David Davis in…” Groves’s eyes dance away to focus upon a half-remembered past. “Jesus, that was ages ago. But that’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it?”

“What else?” Andrew asked. What else could it be?

“Andrew Gillette.” Groves uses the full name to catch attention, to communicate his dire sincerity. “I am not going to say a thing to disgrace you.”

Despite the reassurance, fear twists tighter. “You’ve a right to.”

“No. I don’t.” Anger seeps into words no longer calm. “Andy… you were _twelve_. You were a child, for god’s sake; who can hold anything against you for that? And don’t tell me a damned thing about your father; we both know the old bastard is round the bend. …No offense.”

Andrew does not take offense; his father is mad. Sometimes, he wonders if it runs in the family. But then, the only redhead in their household had been the butler.

“If even a whisper reaches the—”

“Any words, whispers or not, won’t be coming from me.” It is a strong promise for one man to give another after years of separation, especially when they were never close to begin with.

They both know this. Yet they both accept it as the absolute truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Faces crumble, bodies tumble, sunshine" from the song 'Transmigration' by Butterfly Messiah


	3. So it begins. Adam is in his earth

Adam is in his earth. So it begins.

 

At twelve, Andrew Gillette was a wide-eyed novice, little skilled in the arts of deception, love, or much of anything else. His world was composed of poetry, laughter, the beauty of nature, and vast stone halls. His classmates were often dull, boorish, but Andrew – like all boys – inevitably found those of like mind with which to make his own sort of trouble.

David Davis was fourteen, with skin the color of an apple’s white flesh, and hair so black they called it bonny blue. His charming manners earned him the endearment of ‘Darling’ and a local legend was born.

There was always a student with everything. Rich father, doting mother, top grades, winning medals. Darling David Davis won every game, aced every test, and every boy wanted either to be him or to be with him.

Except for Andrew Gillette, who simply wanted.

But it was the unknowing want of a fragile boy whose only understanding of desire was limited to sweets and new books.

As Andrew Gillette was graciously ‘advanced’ due to his rare intelligence, they shared several classes, and he sat behind Darling David Davis as they conjugated French verbs.

 _“Je suis, Tu es, Il/Elle/On est, Nous sommes, Vous êtes, Ils/Elles sont.”_

Il est.

He is.

 _“Je serai, Tu seras, Il/Elle/On sera, Nous serons, Vous serez, Els/Elles seront.”_

Il sera.

He will be.

The boys’ voices rang out in a chorus of warbling highs and lows, and ‘Je suis’ thought Andrew. I am. I am old, I am new, I am uncertain.

 _“J’ai, Tu as, Il/Elle/On a, Nous avons, Vous avez, Ils/Elles ont.”_

J’ai.

J’ai faim. I have hunger.

Like a stomach connected to a man who does not know what is edible.

Before him, the bonny blue head was erect; Andrew could see the ashen chin bobbling along with the others, reciting, _“…auras, Il/Elle/On aura, Nous aurons…”_ A toss of the head sent waves of shining black sliding this way and that, and for a single moment, Andrew saw the pretty profile, more perfect than any effigy glimpsed from the pages of books filled with artists’ interpretations of Greek statues.

After French class, the boys played in the courtyard, ran through the halls. “I want to show you something, Andy.”

Andrew followed like a faithful puppy.

The closet was small, but well lit from a high window that fanned above them, illuminating dusty uniforms, the mop, and the bucket. Darling David Davis turned the bucket upside down, stood upon it to reach the windowsill. “I found it outside, yesterday. I’ll show it to old Bram sure enough, but I though you’d appreciate it even more.”

The chrysalis was still attached to the green leaf, which had begun to whither.

“Oh Davy, it’s wonderful…” It was a treasure, in Andrew’s eyes. He cradled it in his two hands, conscious of the fragility, the delicate structure that could be so easily crushed by clumsy human fingers. “Where did you find it?”

Heads bowed together and one reflected bonny blue, the other auburn gold, from the cheery, ancient sun. The chrysalis hid its many changing colors under a waxy brown film, but the boys saw what showed through: daring black and azure blue, like shadowed mysteries.

“Along the hedge by the stream, you know where the leaves grow thick and coarse? Playing, we lost a ball, and I went in… I never found it, but this was hanging right before me, like mistletoe.”

Andrew looked up; his dark eyes wide and curious. “What sort do you think it is?”

“Can’t know for certain, can we? Not until it opens.”

“You’ll keep it somewhere safe?”

“Of course. Andy… you’ve got the funniest coloring.”

“I know. No one else in my family has hair like mine.”

“I meant the hair and eyes.” Darling David’s voice was still changing, and the pitch of it broke up and down when he spoke, like a bubbling brook. “Ginger hair, but brown eyes. I’ve never seen the like.”

Andrew didn’t know what to say. He was not accustomed to speaking about himself.

“Darling!!”

“Oi, Davis!”

Andrew didn’t even hear the shouts. Darling David glared at the door. “Five minutes’ peace too much to ask?” he muttered.

An abrupt bashfulness flushed Andrew’s features. “Have you ever kissed anyone, Davy?”

“Of cou— I mean… I have, yes.”

Shy manners gave way to curiosity. “What’s it like?”

Darling David smiled, the handsomest expression he was capable of, which was very handsome indeed. “Depends on who it is, of course.”

“Oh.”

“I could show you, if you like.”

Shock, joy! “You wouldn’t mind?” His heart pattered like a little bird, quick and frightened.

“No, I don’t mind. Would you like to try it?”

Andrew’s breath was gone, but Darling David Davis kissed him anyway.

What sheer bliss is this! Soft lips, fuzz cheek, the touch of eyelashes flutter…

The door opened.

“Thought I heard— I _say_ …” The little spit of the boy who looked up at them did so with eyes wide and mouth gaping.

It might have been simple to keep Teddy Groves quiet; everyone knew he’d do anything for a chunk of candy.

But the figure that towered behind him was a man who cast shadows when he was not even present. His reach in the school was both long and terrifying and his tiny black eyes glowered down with a mounting rage.

“Oh,” Darling David Davis sighed out, “Headmaster…”

Andrew had never been beat so hard.

Two days later, when he went back to the closet, he had found the chrysalis, mashed into the stone floor, green guts spilled and crusted, dusty wings turned to powder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Adam is in his earth. So it begins" is from James Agee's 'So it begins. Adam is in his earth"


	4. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

...there will be time  
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet

Andrew awakens late, the sun is already up.

“I hope this does not become habit.”

Andrew assures James Norrington that it will not. “Mister Groves is not a close acquaintance.”

James Norrington is a man who controls his expressions, but with gracious prudence, he reveals the calm disbelief. “He would say otherwise.”

“I cannot imagine his meaning,” Andrew says flippantly. Today, he wears many masks, and he is primed, like the pan of a gun ready for battle. “We haven’t seen each other in a decade, and haven’t corresponded in all that time. I’d quite forgotten him.”

“Well, he hasn’t forgotten you.” The thunder gentles then. “Gillette… you are allowed to have friends.”

Andrew’s insides twist at the hint of pity, but his masks do not betray him. “Friends are overvalued. As it is, I doubt I could chase Groves off with a bullwhip. He’s tenacious.”

James Norrington laughs. Polite. “I confess: I was worried. You didn’t look pleased to see him.”

“A polite understatement.” His mask was not in place the previous night. It slipped and shattered, leaving emotions naked and exposed. He remembers this vividly. “A mixture of utter surprise and sudden recollections…”

“Unpleasant recollections?” The pity, this time, is tempered by inquisitiveness and consideration.

“Yes, but not on Teddy’s account. Forgive my familiarity, I should say ‘Mister Groves.’ But he was two years my junior… everyone called him Teddy.”

“It suits him.”

“Aye.” Conversations, especially personal dialogues like this, are hoarded. The men have nothing of great import to attend, so Andrew will let the words flow on. “He was a little wretch at school, utterly absorbed with games and sweets and little else until he saw a Navy ship when he was thirteen.”

“All down hill from there, then?”

“Quite.”

James Norrington now knows almost more about a man he met the previous day than he does about a man who’s served beside him for five years. “What about you, Gillette?”

“Me, sir?”

“Were you meant for the Navy, or one of those who had to beg for it?”

The temptation is thick in his throat. He could say so many things! This is who I was, who I am, what I suffered, what I became. But would it endear him? Or ostracize? “I begged my father for many things, but received none of them.”

Dark eyebrows, lines like Andrew’s ink, curl inward. Thoughtful, troubled. There has always been this unexplained uneasiness between them, like a haunting. Would this relieve or exacerbate it? “Ah… A second son then?”

“Precisely.”

“Like myself, then.”

Funny. Andrew always pictured James Norrington as an only child. Severe. Commanding. He had conjured images of the straight young man, alone and inflexible, eyes like glass. Now, half turned away, green eyes toward the sea, his ear resembles a seashell, but Andrew knows that it would be soft and yielding to his tongue. “The Navy was chosen for you?”

“Yes. I’d known almost from birth what my path would be. I accepted it readily. Yes… the Navy suits me.” James Norrington still looks to the sea, and something like a smile pulls pink lips thin and tight. “I shall die a proud man, if not a happy one.”

“Happy, sir? You’re bound to make Commodore within a year, and you barely thirty.”

“Yes. And does promotion give you happiness, Mister Gillette?”

“It does, sir. I find that pride has a direct impact upon my pleasure, sir.”

“Perhaps.” James Norrington looks pensive again; dark notions pass across his visage like clouds scudding before the moon. “But, if I may say so, you’re an uncommon man, Mister Gillette.”

“I’m not exceptional, sir.” The denial is reflexive, but even Andrew does not know if he believes it himself. He was always intelligent, and took his pleasures elsewhere than the norm. “But it’s been said I’m a bit… missish.”

James Norrington laughs; the sound is resonating music, a chord of paradise. “You do come off as a bit of a prude, yes…”

Andrew has been reading James Norrington for ages. “But?”

Green eyes and gentle mouth express rare kindness. “But, quite a lot of it is for show.” James Norrington has been reading Andrew, too.

Behind the masks, the heart flutters, the stomach drops, and though hot blood rushes through Andrew like a geyser, his hands are abruptly cold as ice. “Sir? …I’m sorry, I don’t…”

“We don’t talk,” James Norrington decides, looking Andrew in the eye. “Not truly. In fact, I think this may be the first conversation we’ve ever had that was neither military nor nautical. It is a shame.”

“Yes. Uh, I agree, sir.” Despite the fantastic depths of his desire, Andrew had never prepared for a shift to his reality, to his paradigm.

“And do you agree because I’m your Captain or because you feel the same?”

Andrew’s mouth is a desert, parched, empty. Instead of swallowing, he coughs, and has to look away to regain some equilibrium, to reposition his self-assurance and pretension. Once he does, the words come easier. “I would value your friendship, sir. But you are my commander…”

“And you value your duty more?”

“Yes.” Andrew cannot keep the relief from his answer.

“Well. It does not seem to me that one should ever come into conflict with the other.” His smile is tight, the expression of controlled benevolence, but still sincere.

Andrew’s smiles are only ever of two sorts: real and false. His real smile has not been openly displayed since he was a boy; it is an expression of tender joy, small, sweet, and enthralling. He does not know that James Norrington has seen the smile in unguarded moments. His false one is far more common: an arrogant grin framed by tight brackets in the skin and highlighted by dark eyes crinkled in wry amusement.

In response to James Norrington’s opinion, Andrew offers his false smile in accord even as he realizes that being choked with friendship will likely be far more agonizing than distant infatuation.

“Well then, the next time we’re in the officers’ mess together, I expect you to come find me, rather than sticking to that corner table like a leech.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And drop the ‘sir,’ Gillette. We’re not on duty.”

Gillette nods, and cannot imagine addressing the man as anything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "...there will be time/ To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet" is from T.S. Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock


	5. Sonnet 146

Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,  
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

 

Theodore Groves, Andrew discovers, has little consideration for boundaries.

It is morning. Early. The sun peeks its head out from the blue line of the Atlantic, and threatens to scorch all within its reach by noon.

Andrew’s uniform clothes him in tiers like a costume, white, gold, and blue. He washes his hands of black charcoal, but not all of it comes off.

The door opens. “Andy, it’s me.” Theodore Groves is mostly dressed. He lacks his hat and wig, and his cravat is not tied. “I _say_ …” Brash feet carry the man forward and bold eyes take in Andrew’s quarters.

The stone-lined room in the Fort is not large, but enough for bed, desk, chair, trunk, and violin. Andrew, after all, does not have many needs. The place – stuffed with papers and little else – well becomes him, and after five years away from England, it is home.

“What _is_ all this?” Groves’s voice contains awe, the wonder of a man seeing something entirely new. His eyes travel the newsprint pasted to the grey stones, charcoal lines sketching a landscape of ocean and jungle on his hidden walls.

The newsprint was delicate, but Andrew had persisted until the brownish-gray broadsheets were spread in overlying disarray like half-finished wallpaper applied by a maniac. The charcoal was pilfered here and there and stained the deep lines that crossed his palms and hatched his fingers as he worked to inscribe the monochrome scene of harbored ships and seabirds winging over sharp foliage and volcanic hills that jutted like knives.

“I… grew tired of the gray.”

“So, you… did this. Huh. It’s, uh, unique.”

“I don’t usually let people in my room.”

“I assume you mean I’m the only one to call upon you.”

Andrew frowns, expertly displaying his disapproval. “No that is not what I mean. Though it’s true.” He sighs. “Either come in or go away, but shut the door.”

Groves absently shuts the door in an elegant motion and turns his wide-eyed attention to the desk. He traces the ink with a rope-roughened fingertip and then rifles through the papers there.

“That’s… private property. Teddy, please…”

“This is him,” Groves realizes, “these are all of the Captain.” He turns upon Andrew with sudden agility. “Darling David was only the first, wasn’t he? You… Jesus, they just go on and on…” Again, his attention is drawn to the stacks of vellum. He shuffles the pages, revealing ((in flashes of white paper and black ink)) the slope of willowy shoulders, the curve of a close-shaved chin, and carefully penned lines of adulation.

Then, Groves chuckles. It is a neigh of soft amusement and appreciation. “Damn. You’ve got it. Bad.” With an odd reverence, Groves replaces the stack of paper. “Well, old boy, I must say… it’s a good thing I’m of such easygoing nature, and more loyal to friends than to crown.”

“But we hardly know one another.”

“Not as men,” Groves admits. “But we knew each other as boys. Once, we played and learned together, and I like to think we haven’t turned out half-bad, or strayed too much from who we used to be.”

“You’re an idealist.”

Groves’s smiles are always honest. “Yes. Exactly. And,” laughter joins the grin, “you’re a romantic. What a pair!”

“You’ll keep yet another of my secrets?” Andrew asks, too emotionally drained to be overly concerned.

“Yes. By god, Andy but we’re hopeless.”

“So it would seem.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,/ Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?" is from Shakespeare's Sonnet 146


	6. Terence, This is Stupid Stuff

Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink

 

When a tradition begins, it is not seen as anything but a random occurrence. Repeated, it becomes habit. A habit unbroken is, finally, custom.

But at the beginning, it is almost meaningless.

Groves, Andrew, and James Norrington meet for drinks. The tallow smoke clings to blue and white, the ale tastes cool and good, and the table wobbles incessantly as they speak of things both weighty and trifling.

Groves prefers to tell tales out of school. They are harmless, and mostly untrue. But he tells them with a vigor and excitement that is infectious.

When the atmosphere is right, Andrew can be coaxed to speak of things not often considered by officers and even more rarely by sailors. He describes art and architecture that he has seen in his travels, and of concerts where famous symphonies performed. Finding such a receptive audience, Andrew is surprised to learn what joy it gives him to share these reminiscences. Occasionally, Groves will tease him about his poetry and drawings, but never enough to rouse suspicion.

James Norrington often begins the night with complaints, though none of the three would call them such, but these are his confidants now, and ears and hearts are ready to lay to rest a Captain’s heavy burdens, or lay them aside for a short while, if that is all they are able to do. James Norrington discovers that doing so eases his stress, and he is more apt to smile after a night with the two Lieutenants.

Tonight is like every other night. Groves is boisterous, Andrew reserved, and James Norrington is happy to be with them both.

Theodore Groves began the night with an entirely fictitious story about a young Andrew, a pot of honey, and several mice. Andrew followed this up with opinions about Donne and Pope. The Captain contented himself with rants upon a pair of hopeless midshipmen as well as an unnamed Admiral, though they all knew who he meant.

After this, a song was proposed, and the choice was put to a vote.

Many of the tavern’s patrons joined in.

> “What shall we do with a drunken sailor,  
> What shall we do with a drunken sailor,  
> What shall we do with a drunken sailor,  
> Early in the morning?  
> Way-aye, there she rises,  
> Way-aye, there she rises,  
> Way-aye, there she rises,  
> Early in the morning!
> 
> “Chuck him in the long-boat till he gets sober,  
> Chuck him in the long-boat till he gets sober,  
> Chuck him in the long-boat till he gets sober,  
> Early in the morning!  
> Way-aye, there she rises,  
> Way-aye, there she rises,  
> Way-aye, there she rises,  
> Early in the morning!”

Tables were pounded, floors stamped, hands clapped.

Sobriety was obliterated.

“Let’s play Who Knows It?” It is Groves’s proposal and his pair of companions readily seconds it. “I’ll start then. And for tonight’s theme I choose… the sea.” He clears his throat, an affectation. He quotes: “ _‘Her lips were red, her looks were free—’_ ”

“ _‘Her locks were yellow as gold, Her skin was white as leprosy…’_ Easy,” James Norrington tells him pompously. “Everyone knows Coleridge.”

“Alright, you go then.”

James Norrington takes a moment’s contemplation, and is silent longer than he would have been sober. “Ah, I have it. _‘Then bending to the stroke, their oars they drew To their broad breasts, and swift the galley flew.’_ ”

Andrew holds up a hand to stop him. “I know it. From Pope’s translation of Homer’s The Odyssey.”

“You have to prove you know it; those are the rules,” Groves obligingly reminds him. “Take it up.”

A long-suffering sigh precedes Andrew’s recitation, which is meant to be dry, but he hasn’t the heart to vilify any poetry. “ _‘Up sprung a brisker breeze; with fresh’ning gales The friendly Goddess stretch’d the swelling sails.’_ ”

“I could do with a friendly Goddess from time to time,” Groves moans piteously and eyes the nearest woman. “Well, your turn, old boy.”

Andrew speaks softly, barely heard over the tavern’s spirited rowdiness. “ _‘The floating vessel swum Uplifted, and secure with beaked prow Rode tilting o’er the waves; all dwellings else Flood overwhelm’d, and them with all their pomp Deep under water roll’d…’_ Who knows it?”

“I know it. Paradise Lost, of course,” James Norrington tells him. “ _‘Sea cover’d sea, Sea without shore…’_ A masterful work. Ah, let’s see… Okay, I’ve another one. _‘The sea-nymphs chant their accents shrill, And the Sirens taught to kill With their sweet voice, Make every echoing rock reply—’_ ”

“ _‘Unto their gentle murmuring noise,’_ ” Andrew finishes. “In Praise of Neptune, by Thomas Campion.”

“Indeed,” James Norrington agrees. “Groves, you are allowed to play, you know.”

“Oh, very funny. Don’t mind me, anyway; I like listening.”

So, Andrew takes his next turn. “Here’s one for you then, Teddy, if the Captain is so gracious as to let you have it, _‘I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship…’_ ”

“ _‘And a star to steer her by!’_ I know this one!” Groves’s strained attempt to recollect the author is nearly farcical. “It’s, uh… Sea-Fever, isn’t it? By what’s-his-name… Starts with an N, doesn’t it?”

“M.”

“Right! M! Uh, Mmm…” His companions loan him syllables until he has the name in its entirety. “Masefield, I knew that.” After the friendly ribbing, Groves proceeds with the game: “ _‘Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean – roll!’_ ”

“ _‘Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain,’_ ” Andrew quickly spits out. “Yes, from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Lord Byron. Next.”

Disappointed, Groves humphs, “Well. It wasn’t that easy. Go ahead then.”

“Time for something a bit harder, I think…” He ignores the twinned groans. “ _‘Lies a calm along the deep, Like a mirror sleeps the ocean, And the anxious steersman sees Round him neither stir nor motion.’_ ”

“Oh, I don’t remember the rest of it,” James Norrington admits, “but it’s by Goethe.”

“I’ll give it to you,” Andrew allows.

“Ta.”

The game lasts an hour, and Groves makes little contribution to it, choosing instead to watch and listen, keeping his secrets and his smiles to himself.

James Norrington is saying, “ _‘Now, therefore, O thou bitter sea, With no long words we pray to thee, But ask thee, hast thou felt before Such strokes of the long ashen oar?’_ ”

“‘And hast thou yet seen such a prow,’” Andrew answers. “Song of the Argonauts, by Morris.”

“Of course.”

Andrew nearly always prevails in this game. “All right, how about, _‘A sailor’s life of reckless glee, That only is the life for me!’_ ”

Groves immediately jumps in with, “ _‘A life of freedom on the sea, That only is the life for me!’_ Cheater! No one knows who wrote My Bounding Bark!”

Gracefully, Andrew admits to the deceit.

“Finally! Now, one more, what do you say?” Groves’s companions agree, but the man’s smile holds a glint of wickedness that shows through his sinister eyes. “Aye, I have one. _‘He heard a light And gentle voice behind him say: Matelot, Matelot, Where you go My thoughts go with you.’_ Who knows it?”

“I, I’m not sure…” James Norrington’s brow is dark with uncertainty.

“And our resident pedant? Don’t you know it, Andy?”

“I, uh… Maybe…”

“How about this bit: _‘You will remember the light Through the winter night That guides you safely home. Though you find Womenkind To be frail, One love cannot fail—’_ ”

“Ah yes, of course,” Andrew says, to shut the man up. “Matelot, by… Coward. I should have remembered.”

“You have to prove you know it…” To varying degrees of surprise, James Norrington is the one to protest the claim.

So Andrew recites, “ _‘Though half the world away, Never mind If you find other charms, Here within my arms You’ll sleep… Sailor from the deep.’_ ” He finishes in a mere whisper, “ _‘Matelot, Matelot, Where you go My heart will follow, Matelot, Matelot, When you go down to the sea.’_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink" is from A.E. Housman's 'Terence, This is Stupid Stuff'


	7. I Am He That Aches With Love

does not all matter, aching, attract all matter?

 

They are so drunk, neither could have said whether Groves did it intentionally or not.

The walk back to the Fort is hazy, the vomiting over the bridge less so.

Somewhere between the gates and the dorms, Groves disappears.

Andrew and his Captain lean against a door. Eventually, Andrew identifies it as his own.

The door opens before them, inviting, though the room beyond is dark and slashed with moonbeams.

Still, the bed is wide and flat. James Norrington gracelessly falls into it. Andrew, with drunken concentration, lights a lantern and carefully places it in the center of the desk, far from any paper. He sits upon the chair and tries not to fall out of it.

As though unsure of the realness of the world, James Norrington lifts a hand and presses it against the papered wall; the hand comes away smudged with black. “Wazzis?”

“Art.”

“’N my hand…”

“Coal.”

“Like for fires?”

“Yes, sir.”

James Norrington giggles when he is drunk. “Don’ call me sir.”

“Sorry, sir.”

More sniggering from the prone Captain on the bed. “Charcoal… waitamimmute…” Dark eyebrows draw close; a pink tongue makes an appearance, swiping the lower lip.

Andrew watches the face transform.

“Your wall’s all paper.”

“Yeah.”

“An’… with lines.”

“Yeah.”

“Z’issit a lan’scape?”

“Yeah.”

“Z’pretty.”

“Thanks.”

“You diddit?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow.”

James Norrington sleeps on the bed.

Andrew tries to rest on the chair. But he is cold and cannot sleep.

He lies upon the bed, it is a hazardous process. He takes the liberty ((skin touches his)) of moving a flung arm by gently taking wrist and elbow, moving them like a puppet. He sits first, toes off buckled black shoes. Each movement is a test. Is he too close? He lifts one leg, the other, leans back, so slow, until red head touches pillow. He turns toward the room, away from the man. He chases the lingering effects of the night away in order to memorize every second.

Soft puffs of breath on the back of his head. The curl of a reflung hand. The hot press of a body.

Andrew lays stiff and breathless. He does not sleep for many hours, sobering as the night wears on, relishing the selfish pleasure afforded by the sudden proximity to James Norrington.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Does not all matter, aching, attract all matter?" is from Walt Whitman's 'I Am He That Aches With Love'


	8. Xanthippe, singing at her lyre

Everything’s uncertain.  
Except that my soul is burning.

 

It is Sunday. The Navy, though vigorous in many things, reserves Sunday as a day of rest and a time to laze as though in indefinite, blissful limbo.

When in shadow, Andrew’s small, square room often looks bare and grimy, even with the cleanly stacked papers lining the walls and furnishings like miniature columns, illuminating the Parthenon of his desk. But in the morning, when the early golden light slips and slides through the narrow eastern window, the place shimmers, reflecting like flax off the yellowed newsprint and wooden fixtures until a fairy patina gilds every square inch of the otherwise gray and sadly desolate dwelling.

On this Sunday morning, it is late – almost noon – but the gold light remains, the copper candleholder blazes, the lanterns gleam like soap bubbles, the walls seem to smolder, and even the shadows glow.

Andrew’s bed is warm, though his clothes cling unpleasantly, twisted in haphazard disarray, pulling at him. Brown eyes open, find the figure that has made itself welcome at the desk.

James Norrington, turned at three quarter profile, moves very little and every motion is contained. By the stiff line of his shoulders, Andrew can see the underlying intensity within strained muscles. The hat and coat hang upon nails on the back of the door. James Norrington’s hands, slim and elegant, shift paper from one pile to another. He picks one page up, examines it, sets it aside. Over and over. Like reading an unbound book from beginning to end. Without stopping. The only sound is the crackling of vellum.

Although Andrew does not move, something like a shiver runs through his gut, churning up fear, anxiety, mortification like muddy sludge until his belly roils with it.

James Norrington’s hair – sheened like wet chestnuts in the light – falls in disarray about a tense face, green eyes flicker in sharp movements like darting swallows.

The room is small; from the bed, Andrew can catch glimpses of the pages that slowly file by, and he remembers. That one was drawn after Groves cut his hand on a sliced splinter of shrapnel and washed the cuff of James Norrington’s coat with blood. That one was written after a night of contemplating James Norrington’s eyes. There was a paragraph on what Andrew would do to his Captain with a feather, and there was a sketch of a meditative profile at dusk. They march by in slow succession: intricate drawings and thirty second drafts, poems of longing and rambling dissertations on elbows or smiles.

Andrew wishes he could stay asleep, for ages and ages like a dusty beauty, and never wake up until the entire world had forgot him and his traitorous indignity.

Neither the church nor the government pardon such sins.

Andrew knows he will struggle when the floor drops out from under him. His entire body will dance as he instinctively tightens his neck… he loves life too much to surrender to any end; that is why he fights so fiercely, though his hand prefers pen to blade.

There is a sudden stillness in the room. James Norrington has ceased all movement. The air is quiet.

Most events, when they happen, happen in measurable time, even without a clock. One might say, ‘oh yes, it took about an hour or so,’ or maybe ‘along the lines of a few minutes.’ Sometimes things happen faster of course, and one says, ‘in the wink of an eye’ or ‘like a flash in the pan.’ One might compare it to a single heartbeat or a moment’s breath. But some things, even though one knows they must take some quantifiable amount of time, seem to span not even the smallest of seconds.

In no time at all then, James Norrington is no longer still, nor is he looking at the desk. Time is errant in this strange, sunlit morning, and does not obey the sun. Suddenly – so suddenly it seems no time passes at all – James Norrington looks at Andrew. Green eyes hard, and the only dark thing in the room.

If he’d had a moment, the mere second’s warning of a head turning, Andrew could have feigned sleep. But alas, there is the man looking at him, and Andrew looks back.

Maybe, Andrew wishes rather than trusts, it is a dream. He can say nothing, but only waits. A lifetime of waiting.

Movement and time return then, after the connection of acknowledged gazes. James Norrington sits up straight, regards the desk again as though for an idle reminder of what has transgressed, and stands.

Unlike the sudden look, this takes an era. The chair scrapes loud on the stone floor, the body’s weight shifts ((hands on knees, bowed head, lean forward, hips up)) until the man is standing, vertical and tall, and slim without his bulky blue brocade coat like the sky. The sun shines off him, his white finery: blinding.

Andrew’s world is made of brightness and darkness. For the first time in his life all shadow is annihilated, for the man is coming toward him on light, stockinged feet. The man – James Norrington – who makes his heart sing, his spirit soar. Poetry comes unbidden to his mind in perfect, metered waves and he wants to write it down, but he desires even more to look at this man.

…a man who moves not with the confidence of a Navy Captain, but the hesitancy of a mere mortal. Sweat beads on the lip and forehead, hands flutter with insecurity, eyes dart and throat swallows. “Gillette.” The word is a staccato question.

“Yes. I…” Andrew finally rises. His white-stockinged feet touch the stone floor with a rasping whisper as one arm pushes him upright. “Sir, I…”

James Norrington lifts a hand to cover his own mouth, as though to stop whatever might come inadvertently out of it. His face, half hidden, transforms. Tears fall as they arise, streaming down hot cheeks. Overwhelmed, he sits where he is, down hard upon the cold stone floor, baffled and besieged by knowledge and questions. He tries to speak and cannot, choked by emotion— a true emotion that he has neither experienced nor shown in years.

“Oh, Captain!” Andrew thinks he must go to this man, offer comfort, but would it be more of a comfort to him if Andrew simply disappeared?

Andrew glides to the floor in a movement more graceful than he will ever know, like some perfect thing, a swan. He sits there, ignores the cold floor, the bright sun. His hand hovers, close enough to feel the heat. But he does not touch. No, he must not take that liberty. Not without consent. “Please don’t cry, sir. I don’t know what’s wrong, but I’m sure it’s not worth it.”

It is the hardest thing in the world for James Norrington to speak; the words come out mangled by sobs and the barrier of his hand. “Can you be so wholehearted? Damn you, Gillette! Damn you!” It is suddenly fierce, the hand falls, a deep rage clouds the face. Nostrils flare, cheeks flame. Sweat pastes disheveled brown hair to the creased forehead. “Damn you!”

Sensing the danger, the uncontrolled emotion like some poor rodent chased down by a predator – all intuition – Andrew begins to retreat.

“NO!” James Norrington’s shriek is high and bloodthirsty. His strong bird hands clasp Andrew’s arm like a vice, twisting it viciously. “How dare you! HOW DARE YOU?!”

“Sir, you’re hurting me.” Andrew’s whimper is piteous, yet contains no fear. It is as the abject adoration of a lover scorned but still loving.

It strikes deeply, like a heavenly arpeggio from an ancient organ and the hands are suddenly gone, as though they never were. “Andrew.”

Andrew gasps at his name spoken by this man, this close, in such an ardent, unashamed way. “Yes, I know, I shouldn’t have…”

“You keep trying to defend yourself,” James Norrington tells him. “Don’t. I’m just… so angry.”   
“Why, sir?”

Breath huffs out, heavy and stuttering. “I don’t know.”

Apprehension bleeds from the room, replaced by stale calm. Looking beside him, James Norrington spies the papers that line – in their crenellated stacks – the desk in pale columns bleached yellow by the sun. He reaches out, but Andrew halts the hand with his own, steady and firm. That flesh should meet such flesh! “It’s all the same. Nothing new.”

“I want to see that one.”

Andrew picks up the sheet of paper and draws it into his lap. But he does not look at it as he recites. He has dark eyes only for James Norrington, who meets the reverential stare.

“If any man was ever loved, then surely thee.   
If any man was meant for death, then surely me.

“O king of stars and sunbeams  
Tyrant of my mind,  
You reign my nightly dreams  
And prove that love is blind.

“If I could make a choice,  
I would opt for loveless life,  
Drown out Cupid’s voice  
And take some common wife.

“But Eros’ dart strikes hard and quick  
And my heart binds clean and fast  
While it seems that passion’s wick  
Will everything else outlast.

“‘If only’ I sing, ‘if only…’  
That is my daily song;  
For how long can a man be lonely?  
‘How long,’ I ask, ‘How long?’

“Forever is the answer, forever is my lot.  
No matter how I love thee, no matter how besot.”

“They’re all… for me.”

“Yes, sir.”

James Norrington bows his head, his anger drowned to nothing by awe and reason combined. Before stringent logic can overwhelm what emotion lingers, he reaches out, replaces the poem, and grabs Andrew’s hand in a firm grip, pressing, pressing… as though to infuse something through the skin, or maybe to bring something into himself.

Andrew gasps, a part of him awakens, color flushes his fair freckled face and he instinctively withdraws, although the hand will not let him go. “Sir?”

“Dammit; stop calling me that.” His command is that of an officer. “What—” He bites the question off, but then forges on again, as though forcing air through a blocked bellows. “What is it like? Seeing the world the way you do… Feeling, feeling what you feel… for me?”

Andrew’s gaze darts to the hand that holds his own, the hand that will not let him go. He could concentrate if only it weren’t for that hand! hot, strong, so alive. “I… It’s… not a healthy fixation, I know, but it is gratifying. In so many ways. I… Love is a pure thing. Every time I look at you, my world burns so bright that I…”

Norrington is crying again, just too overwhelmed at what he has inspired in another. He closes weeping eyes and pulls Andrew to him, strong arms embracing solid shoulders, hands clawing a broad back, face pressed to pulsing neck.  Andrew shivers all over and tries not to weep; it is too much.

He finds his body knowing things that his mind doesn’t. He knows exactly where to set his hands, where to touch, how to hold. The whys are lost to him, but all else comes like magic.

The body under his hands, the man in his arms, is hot. Hot all over. They both are.

Suddenly, Andrew does not know how to behave himself; it is not as though this could have been foreseen in even the wildest circumstances. So Andrew rubs his cheek over James Norrington’s clumsy hair, tests the muscles of the heaving back, and doesn’t think twice – doesn’t think at all – about pressing a kiss to the pounding pulse point of the lean neck.

A gasp precedes the hold that tightens around Andrew’s shoulders. The skin of James Norrington’s arms erupts in goose bumps under the billowing white silk and he pushes his mouth against Andrew’s collarbone, where the shirt has twisted askew. It isn’t a kiss; his mouth is open and saliva dampens Andrew’s chest.

The way lumbering hands pull ineffectively at rich clothes suggests the dumb push of one animal at another. Buttons are forgotten entirely.

Tears fall, intermittent like spring showers. Andrew pulls off James Norrington’s waistcoat. The shirt is lifted over the disheveled head. Brown hair falls every which way, the chest and arms are pale as egg whites, but the man’s face is flushed from crying.

“God, what am I doing?” Andrew realizes, halts, hands floating over skin that looks marble-smooth, textured here and there with dark, curling hair. Golden sun reflects off the luster of sweat that Andrew wants to lick off.

The naked chest inflates and deflates rapidly like a bladder, and James Norrington closes over-bright eyes. His deep voice is steeped in breathless want. “Don’t stop.”

Three of Andrew’s fingers alight on a white-clad knee. “…Let me lock the door.”

He stands swiftly ((his hand rasps as it leaves the knee)) and his paces across the small room shuffle like silence, so that the twist of the bolt is loud, earth-shattering in its meaning.

Intent settles like winter snow, profound in the gilded room.

Andrew, blushing and breathing hard, turns back to find green eyes still closed, hidden behind fragile lids like cherry blossoms. Just waiting.

Andrew drops to his knees like an apostle at prayer to whisper, “Why?” so close that his breath stirs the messy brown hair.

“Because… I trust you and…” He could go on to say something about loneliness or aching, but as it is, Andrew kisses a sharp shoulder blade and oxygen abruptly flees, leaving James Norrington wordless and breathless.

“I love you,” Andrew vows when his damp hand skitters down a pale arm.

“I love you,” when his nose brushes the nape of a long neck.

“I love you,” when his flat palm slides across a smooth belly.

The ‘I love you’s fill the room until James Norrington hears nothing else, only the promise echoing over and over to his delighted ears.

No matter the fear, the desire overwhelms it, and reason too. As if there is nothing in the world like sin or consequence.

Andrew lifts James Norrington like a dancer to the bed and strips him clean of clothing. The sun paints his egg-white skin in streamers of gold as he’s pressed flat to the thin mattress.

Kneeling beside the bed, Andrew feasts.

His eyes feast, his hands, his mouth.

Until he is full, sated, bursting with true knowledge of the body: the way foot connects to leg, the length from wrist to elbow, the changing hue of skin from neck to breast to stomach.

Andrew undoes him like a knot.

His penis stands firm to attention, rouged and leaking. By the time Andrew touches it, James Norrington is slave to sensation and his keening cry must be stifled with a kiss.

Pale, empty hands grapple at nothing, and one swipes the papered wall, smudging a black ship and layering the hand in scuffed, black charcoal.

Andrew, still in the wrinkled dregs of his uniform, bows over and worships the prone form with reverential adulation. His pouting lips suck the tender flesh, leaving patches of skin the color of strawberries in a path from neck to jutting hipbone.

When James Norrington begs, it is a thing both strange and sweet, and heightens Andrew’s ardor to altitudes beyond ecstasy. Andrew’s mouth is greedy, and he humps the mattress in futile desperation. He licks and nips the straining cock, and when he finally allows himself the pleasure of sinking his mouth down over the hot length, he comes in his breeches and howls around the mouthful.

James Norrington spends quickly after that, raging rushes of heat and cold cycling through him in waves as he pumps into the moist heat and grinds out a straining moan.

=

Heavy breathing fills the room, and as the sun moves west, the gold abandons them like a snuffed candle. Shadows suffuse the room and James Norrington dresses in silence.

Confusion is obvious in his darting, nervous expression.

Andrew helps tie the breeches, buckle the shoes, meek as a devoted slave.

It is obvious that James Norrington cannot leave soon enough.

Alone, Andrew sits on the warm bed.

A charcoal handprint stains the sheet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Everything's uncertain. Except that my soul is burning" is from Philodemos’s 'Xanthippe, singing at her lyre'


	9. Adieu, farewell earth's bliss

This world uncertain is

Andrew reflects upon that Sunday morning, wondering how it all came about, as though a story heard third-hand from a common gossipmonger, as though he had not been there to know what proceeded from what.

 Not only are the _whys_ elusive, but even the _whats_ and _whens_ as well. Everything blurs together so that he can hardly recall the proper progression of events, leaving him wondering whether he forced unwanted attentions on the Captain, or if he himself had been conned into the strange giving of pleasure on the bed while the morning sun proved golden, only to abandon them to the murky gray shadows.

Andrew recalls a lesson from school. Not long after the death of Jesus Christ, a poet set to words ten lines of wisdom that were translated fifteen hundred years later. A phrase repeats, resounding through Andrew’s head like a bad, bawdy tune. He is unable to shake it, but only thinks over and over, ‘Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short.’

When he reports to his Captain for duty on Monday, the greeting is strained and brief.

Reconciliations, rationalizations… what they did is beyond understanding.

And all week, they look at one another in fear, half expecting the other to attack, to demand, to blame, to accuse.

But Saturday arrives amid the continuing silence, and no matter how each protests, Groves manages to drag both of them back to the same tavern they visit every Saturday night, where they drink ale and sing songs like Blow the Man Down and Rule, Britannia.

Without obtaining permission or testing the waters, Groves begins the game. “I say, we have had some good ones. What for a theme this time? I declare we must make it something easier, else I’ll never play and only drink the night away listening to the two of you go back and forth. So… Well, what do poets write about more than love? That’s as good a place as I any, I dare say. So, I’ll start again; it was my idea after all.” If Groves has noticed the weeklong tension, he has not spoke of it. “I like this one, though I’m sure you’ll know it: _‘Flesh of thy flesh, bone of thy bone—’_ ”

“ _‘I here, thou there, yet both but one.’_ Anne Bradstreet’s A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment.”

“Yes, that’s right, Andy, of course. …Well, go on. Your turn.”

“ _‘Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short; And done, we straight repent us of the sport.’_ ”

“ _‘Let us not then rush blindly on unto it, Like lustful beasts.’_ Ben Jonson, I believe.” James Norrington eyes Andrew curiously. “I always liked that poem. It makes a good deal of sense. But there’s another I like better.”

“Oh?”

“ _‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying…’_ Do you know it?”

“I know it,” Andrew admits. _‘And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying.’_ …To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time. By Robert Herrick.”

After that, the night goes smoothly. They play the game for longer than usual, and by the end of it, James Norrington is even seen to be laughing.

Groves, who may or may not know what impact he has had upon his friends, does notice the lightening of the atmosphere between the two. He is still boisterous, and his smiles are still wicked, but he is a good friend, and on return to the Fort, he again disappears before they reach it.

The hulking shadows of Andrew’s gray room are chased away by as many lanterns as they can find.

Curious, the crescent moon peers in at the lovers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "This world uncertain is" is from Thomas Nashe's 'Adieu, farewell earth's bliss'


	10. The Song of Songs

you are the waters of my very soul

 

Andrew Gillette lives in a world of light and shadow.

When James enters his sight, the world is light. When he leaves it, all is darkness again.

When no one is watching, tan fingers brush a strong hand and secret smiles betray them ((only to one another and the walls or sand or water that surround them, and occasionally to Teddy Groves, an accomplice in their liaisons.))

In the privacy of four stone walls and surrounded by yellowing papers, the trimmings and trappings of their rigid society are tossed away and shoved out of sight, leaving the two men white and tan and pale and freckled and blushing and happy. Ginger hair and brown hair tangled together in sweaty hanks.

One night, Andrew – with amused and kindly given consent – trims a length of James’s hair and braids it into a love knot at the base of his own skull.

The wig hides this indulgence and Andrew revels in it.

Like most of his lieutenant’s eccentricities, James is charmed, and he teases Andrew regularly.

And although Andrew feels free to speak his love, James never returns the sentiment. Whether this is because he does not feel the same or he is unwilling to say, Andrew does not know. But that Andrew is allowed to say it makes up for the lack, and so he says it at every opportunity. Often, James smiles, though at other times he is too distracted to make any response whatever.

That he smiles is enough; his smiles are warmth like the sun to Andrew, and like a flower to Apollo he turns his face to these smiles as though they alone could feed his loving heart. And Andrew admits, “By loving you, I have learned the best of myself.”

To some, a mere four walls create a prison, but these two men have crafted from them a haven where sunlight, moonlight, and candlelight illuminate truths hidden in every other corner of their world.

When the moon sheens the grubby gray room in dusty white light, Andrew is gentle; his hands and their curious fingertips trace a landscape of flesh turned silver in meandering paths and branching tributaries. Every now and then, Andrew focuses his attention on a single spot and stays there for hours or as long as James lets him until the man is mad with want.

James revels in this, in the surrender, in the joy of it, in the all-consuming ecstasy. And Andrew shamelessly feeds the addiction.

When the sun burns its golden path through the room, they take it in turns to touch one another. Firstly with reverence: the gentle pads of rough fingers meet one another, caresses rule the exchange, and the kisses are blissful heaven. But this wonderful something between them escalates, invigorates, builds a passion out of purity until gentleness is no longer an option.

Then, soothing fingers turn vicious, bruising deep and slipping on salty sweat. Mouths grow fierce, teeth break skin ((tomorrow, James will be forced to lie about his swollen lip, claiming he walked into an opening door)) and bodies writhe together like eels, like great, needing beasts. When they surge and cry out, they only barely smother the howls.

When the night is gray and cloudy, the room swathed in black shadows, Andrew lights a lamp. He persuades James to lie on his stomach on the bed. His pale back is an empty plain. Andrew has India ink and a camelhair brush. The canvas of James’s back is painted with black lines: sometimes a winding poem of love, sometimes a map of erogenous islands, sometimes a dynamic landscape of distant seas, and sometimes swirling lines with no intent other than to claim the skin as his.

Like his drawings, Andrew’s ink often strays from its intended boundaries, marking here and there arms and feet and the backs of taut thighs.

He loves this man, all his many parts.

Late at night, James asks Andrew to read his own poetry out loud.

Andrew is more than willing, and James’s blushes at hearing his own praises ((extolled in the deep and sincere voice)) only make the recitations sweeter.

In return, James whispers ancient poetry to Andrew. The words of Sappho and Michelangelo in that hypnotizing voice make him hard and dizzy. James uses his voice the way a harlot might dance or fondle, but James does it without touching, barely moving. In this way, he incites his own ravishment.

Andrew does not consider himself a wanton or a tempter, but – unwittingly – James Norrington has made him both, for Andrew keeps the man on the edge for hours: teasing, tickling, licking, kissing, sucking, palming, scraping, pinching, cupping, tormenting.

When everything but body is forgotten, then body only rules and James cries for the need of release that Andrew does not allow.

James likes to beg for it. He comes back to Andrew time and again, although he never speaks of love, and Andrew’s whole world is made of light.

The word obsession never occurs to either of them.

= = = = =

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You are the waters of my very soul" is from 'The Song of Songs'

**Author's Note:**

> Each chapter title is a poem, and each chapter begins with a stanza or phrase I found inspiring and relevant.


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